Sexing the Church

Gender, Power, and Ethics in Contemporary Catholicism

Aline H. Kalbian

Publication Year: 2005

"A wonderful book that gives us a fresh angle of vision on modern
Roman Catholic teaching about sex, marriage, gender relationships, and reproduction.
After reading Sexing the Church, few will doubt the extent to which Catholic
teaching about the law of nature owes no small debt to history and culture." --
Richard B. Miller, Poynter Center for the Study of Ethics and American
Institutions

"...Catholic attitudes about women in the
priesthood... display [a] contradiction between egalitarian and subordinationist
views.... Women are denied access to the 'eucharistic' priesthood because allowing
them in would upset the redemptive order. Why is it, then, that imagery from the
created order (women as mothers, brides, virgins) is often used to describe the
redemptive 'mystery' that connects Christ with the Church? Why is the Church 'sexed'
female?... This sexing of the Church is more than just an example of how gender and
order work in Catholic morality; it also reveals tensions in the complex patterns of
Catholic reasoning about marriage, reproduction, and church authority. In a
surprising way, it challenges the order enforced by the Catholic ethics of marriage
and reproduction." -- from Chapter One

The regulation of
human sexuality in contemporary Catholicism, a topic that monopolizes public
conversation about the Catholic Church, is also a central concern of Catholic
theological discussions of religious ethics. Aline H. Kalbian traces the history of
the connection between moral theology and sexual ethics as it applies to the concern
for order in official teachings on marriage, reproduction, and sex. She explores
order as it is reflected in the theology of marriage, the 20th-century challenge to
that order in the debates on contraception and assisted reproduction, and the way
attitudes about gender in Catholicism connect theological and moral order with
ecclesiastical order.

Cover

Front Matter

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

It was my good fortune as I was writing this book to have the unwavering
support of friends, family, and colleagues. In fact, I still have
to pinch myself sometimes at this abundance. I am grateful to them
all.
John Kelsay, my colleague, friend, and chairman in the Department
of Religion at Florida State University has been my greatest champion ...

1. ORDER AND SEXUAL ETHICS

Sex is a contentious topic in Catholicism. Mark Jordan notes that in
the contemporary American imagination, Christianity is often thought
to be nothing more than a “code of sexual conduct” (Jordan 2002,
5). In other words, most Americans know little about the details of
doctrines such as the trinity, the resurrection, or the incarnation, but ...

2. THEOLOGY AND MARRIAGE

Sex for procreation is good; sexual passions are unruly; marriage is a
sacrament. The values embedded in these three statements are not just
expressions of Catholic sexual ethics; they reflect the core of Catholic
theological beliefs about nature, creation, grace, and sin. Consequently,
to better answer the question How does the concept of order clarify ...

3. REPRODUCTION

Marriage and family planning were among the most watched issues at
the general meeting of the Second Vatican Council.1 On October 29,
1964, Cardinal Leo Suenens2 of Malines-Brussels and Patriarch Maximos
IV Saigh of Antioch addressed the general session of the council
on these issues. Suenens, directing his remarks to the newly formed ...

4. GENDER

From our exploration of the normative Catholic teachings on marriage
and reproduction, we can conclude the following: the Catholic
tradition holds procreation as a good but not an absolute one. It is
circumscribed by the relationship between (married) male and female
and by the nature of the act that leads to procreation (sexual intercourse ...

5. CONCLUSION

While the focus of this study of Catholic documents and teachings is
language and moral argument, it would be misleading to think about
these documents without reflecting on the powerful institution that
stands behind them. Catholic sexual ethics integrate theological beliefs
about God’s created order with the belief that the Church has the ...

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